In the field of electronic equipment construction, numerous types of components such as resistors and capacitors are utilized in the circuitry as required by the circuit design criteria. These components are produced by the manufacturer with long leads and can be supplied in either loose or carded arrangement to the electronic equipment manufacturer. The loose or carded resistors, capacitors, etc., as delivered with the elongated lead wires must be cut or trimmed to proper size and then bent or formed prior to soldering or otherwise being electrically connected into the circuitry. Electronic equipment manfacturers generally standardize designs and manufacturing techniques for mass production purposes to thereby increase efficiency and reduce production costs. One common practice to increase efficiency is to uniformly trim and form the component lead wires prior to delivery to the equipment production line. In this manner, the time and energy of each production worker can be concentrated on the equipment assembly without any slowdown for cutting and bending the component leads. In answer to this need, prior workers in the art have been attempting to develop machines that are capable of substantially automatic, continuous, uniform operation to trim and bend component leads to the precise design requirements.
The prior workers in the art have experienced increasing difficulties in uniformly and individually feeding the components to the feed wheels of known type trimming and forming machines in view of the increasing use of smaller and smaller components with correspondingly small lead diameters. The problem could not be solved simply by reducing the tooth size on the feed wheel to accommodate such relatively small diameter leads one at a time because such tooth construction would render the device unusable with larger components when so required. When attempting to use presently available equipment for trimming and bending the leads of smaller components, it was found that quite often the lead wire diameter was smaller than the height of the feed wheel teeth. Because of this, frequently the lead wires of two or even three components might be urged into the same trough or space between adjacent feed wheel teeth, thereby rotatively driving the two or three components at the same time to cause a machine jam.
Because of three circumstances, to date the need remains to provide a component feeder having suitable adjustment means to be capable of always feeding only one component per tooth as the feed wheel is turned in order to accommodate all conventional, commonly employed components, both large and small.